War Drobes

War Drobes

Traditionally, years ago, home furniture was built as a matching set - the same style, and the same wood. All in the same family you might say. It was similar with household appliances.

As the advancement of technology and life, in general, started to improve in the 1900’s, the following eras progressed at an alarming rate.

Appliances were made to be intelligent. A house had smart televisions, smart heating, and smart fridges. They would do whatever their owner required. During the latter part of the 20th century, computers were inbuilt into most things used by humans. This evolved even more in the 21st century when transport became intelligent. Cars, lorries, trains, and even airplanes could drive themselves.

Minimalism became the favoured fashion of all furnishings.

Years later, as was the fickle nature of humanity, things on the fashion side, reverted to the old days. There was a craving for antiques and all things old. Status was a 3-piece suit, a set of matching drawers, storage units, wardrobes, cabinets, and beds. But on the technology side, humans still wanted the easy life and required most jobs to be done for them. Their God was capitalism. It was not, ‘what you need but what you want’.

They also wanted the latest in comfort and so they developed technological household items. It became the age of intelligent furniture. The beds, chairs and settees moulded themselves to each individual. Wardrobes, drawers, and storage fittings could expand or shrink at the whim of their owners. Narnia was almost a reality. Furniture could do almost anything their owner required. For example, if a lady acquired a greater number of dresses to add to her collection, the wardrobe would expand accordingly. If a gentleman wanted to have his shirts stored in matching colour combinations, all he needed to do was throw his dirty shirts into the cupboard. The inbuilt appliance within the unit would then wash, dry and iron them no bother.

Nothing was complicated enough for these clever closets. In fact, humans did not even need to undress themselves. For the wealthy, wardrobes could do it for them using a series of smart, sensitive extending arms which would carefully strip a person of clothes and deposit them into its workings.

Everything in a house was perception and perfection itself. As with most luxuries, greater demand made the production of expensive items cheap enough for the populace to be able to afford, so they appeared in every home. Unfortunately, where there is perfection, there is always a chance of imperfection. And so it was with the smart furnishings.

The advancement of matching pieces of furniture led to them not being just smart and intelligent but to mimic their creator’s emotions, feelings and some say to have souls. Wardrobes were called ‘Drobes’ for short – like a cross between ‘drones’ and ‘wardrobes’.

We liked our new name.

Humans became obese beings, what with their homes doing everything for them. Fridges ordered food to their doors which was delivered by smart vans. Entertainment was streamed through their T.V.’s. Clothes were either made inside the versatile wardrobes using older unfashionable, re-cyclable items or shipped from ‘boutiques’ via pipes linked to empty city stores. The clothes themselves became redundant as people never left their place of abode. Their surroundings were perfectly heated - all cosy, comforting and satisfyingly homely, creating no necessity to move from their houses. Their friends were Zoomified, again through the TV. Virtual parties were the rage for a while. Porn viewing took over from real physical sex which became redundant as folk ‘couldn’t be bothered’ with all the sweaty exertions. It was far too much effort – and smelly.

And then the developing blobs of persons just ran out of steam, grew too fat and died. Their abused furnishings breathed a communal sigh of relief.

They bodies were unceremoniously shovelled away by inbuilt refuge units.

All that was left were the smart things.

Of course, this led to conflict.

As mentioned before, every set of furniture matched, and considered themselves as the home’s new family. We chatted, joked, laughed, and cried together. No tears though as that was one of the few things that was not inbuilt within us.

Like I said, we had traits similar to our creators, some of them being anger and jealousy.

We Mahoganies were better than Oaks. Oaks thought of themselves equal to us and as being far superior to Walnuts, who in turn looked down on piss poor Pines which we considered to be thick as two short planks. Teaks were the royalty of wood and like the humans of olde, we all had an irrational loyalty to them. The Teaks generally kept themselves to themselves and did not like to converse through the communication channels of houses, as we did with our own kind. We all spat on Laminates who were thin on the ground, and other things, but even they cursed what was left of chipboard, a rare old mixture of shavings and glue.

I know we were all timber, but we were different timbers and some of us were of a much higher quality than others.

Regrettably, envy bored itself into our wood like wood worm, the one real irritant in our sides.

This envy engrained itself deep within us and knotted our innards. Oaks listened in to our conversations through under floor electrical roots that could stretch for miles, as could ours. They heard when we maligned them. We heard them when they openly criticised us. To start with it wasn’t too serious as we thought their bark was worse than their bite. But as a result, our criticisms became stronger and more malicious. Tit for tat, so did theirs. We spread our branches to gain more support from other Mahoganies. The enemy was also gathering support from other sympathetic Oaks.

That set off the War of the Drobes – known as the Wardrobes.

All furniture was supposed to be smart and intelligent, but I am sorry to say we were not very diplomatic, which often clouded our judgement. And as it was humans who originally conceived us, we had their lack of common sense in our make-up.

Nevertheless, houses started to join our cause. We were becoming a force to be reckoned with. As a result, rival houses banded together to form small enemy estates within their cities.

What we needed were weapons in the form of suicide furniture that could be impregnated with Deathwatch Beetles or woodworm. Needless to say, we were items of furniture, created by joiners, perfected by techno labs, developed by computers and enhanced into thinking sentient beings.

But, wood boring larvae of the bugs had also evolved - into ravenous sawdust loving insects, by scientists in laboratories who rebelled against the march of so-called progress.

We were aware that a large number of houses in our city had been rife with the tiny warriors. Those buildings that were smitten by them were put into quarantine with walls of electric charges surrounding their foundations. The bugs were smart enough not to destroy the whole of the home’s contents as they had to survive to chew another day. This resulted in very hungry larvae raring to stretch their teeth. These advanced creatures did not have teeth as such, but they had been bred to grow mini drilling machines in their mouths, which could bore into the hardest wood, be it old or new. Not nice for home furniture.

It was my burden to become the leader of our house. As I was the largest piece of furniture. The responsibility fell onto my broad shoulders, so issuing orders to search for volunteers to sacrifice themselves for the common good, the word went out to our expanding community. It was suggested that the volunteers were needed and able to walk away from their abode to search out the Oaks and Walnuts, so pieces with legs were sought after, such as tables and dining chairs. They were to approach the infected houses and at a prearranged time we would temporarily open a small area of the electrical defence for enough Death Beetles to home in on them and lay their awesome larvae.

Of the volunteers, individual dining chairs were willing to step forward, as they were part of sets that could pass on their ‘being’ to others in a symbiotic relationship. They even liked the idea of becoming a hero in the group, and they would live on in more ways than one. The tables were not as keen as they were just large single items and quite cumbersome, requiring all sorts of awkward manoeuvres to negotiate around doors and stairs etc.

And so, our brave volunteers, having expressed the willingness for self-destruction, prepared to march into battle.

At a prearranged time, we co-ordinated the first attack. From our house the dining chair stepped courageously forward to certain destruction, meeting up with many compatriots at a chosen location. When their numbers were swollen to about fifty, they set forth to infiltrate the enemies’ houses. But, as mentioned earlier, our lack of common sense did not figure out that our foes had intercepted our communication system and done exactly the same thing. Their forces managed to head off ours and a battle ensued with dining chair rage. We could hear the sharp sounds of splintering wood and cracking legs as they ferociously collided like Titans. We were aghast at the savagery that ensued. Only one survived and it was one of ours. We had also forgotten that the door of escape for the Deathwatch Beetle larvae had been left open at one of the infected homes, which was where our chairs had been ambushed.

Our surviving hero limped back to our house on only two legs, and we eagerly let it in, wanting to gather intelligence and analyse the situation. Woe of woes! We also let in the trail of Deathwatch Beetle larvae that had followed our ailing chair. In no time at all the vicious creatures set to work on our undefended furniture. They attacked the electrical circuitry that kept them and their kind at bay, destroying our power to imprison them. They were now free to create chaos and eat us all.

The War of the Drobes had been lost to bugs no bigger than a splinter of wood. We can only hope that the other homes have survived the conflagration and some of us might live to move houses, otherwise household furniture will just be furniture – furniture that have themselves become homes to their mini-invaders. It was the New World Order.

All I can say is, ‘Walnuts!’

Word count 1772